333 
I consider that great praise is due to the Messrs. Longley 
for the facilities they afforded in order to rescue as perfect 
a collection of the bones as possible, as soon as it was ascer- 
tained they were of so interesting a nature ; as, without their 
sanction and direct interference in causing special excava- 
tions to be made, it is most probable very few specimens 
would have been preserved ; and thus one of the most im- 
portant geological discoveries ever made in this neighbour- 
hood would have been lost to science, and the Society's 
Museum deprived of the most valuable series of British 
Hippopotamic remains in the kingdom. I believe I am cor- 
rect in this assertion ; for in the British Museum the speci- 
mens are very few and unimportant. The majority therein 
deposited are from the magnificent collection of fossils 
discovered in the Sivalik Hills, in India, by Capt. Cautley 
and Dr. Falconer ; and in provincial collections we find only 
a molar tooth in one, a canine tooth in another, or fragments 
of the jaw and teeth in a third ; and although Mr. Trimmer, 
in describing those disinterred in the brick-field at Brentford, 
remarks, — " The remains of the Hippopotamus are so ex- 
tremely abundant, that, in turning over an area of 120 yards 
in the present season (1812), parts of six tusks have been 
found," yet, as he does not specify the exact kind of tusk, 
whether incisor or canine, or both, we cannot determine 
with certainty to what number of individuals these tusks 
may have belonged, or whether to more than one, as each 
animal has six larger tusks, besides others of an interme- 
diate size ; so that, in reality, only one specimen might have 
been deposited at Brentford, and the bones subsequently 
much dispersed. 
From the few remarks I have thus thrown together con- 
cerning the discovery at Wortley of these mammalian relics, 
the importance of depositing even a single bone of an 
unknown animal in a public Museum will be evident, as it is 
by the accumulation of a mass of materials of local interest 
